Below, Michael makes an assessment that appears pretty likely: “I don’t think Europe or America will make large, generational alterations to their society or way of life on Ukraine’s behalf. The threat would have to be much more real.”
But as for that threat being much more real . . . how secure do you think the Baltic-State members of NATO — Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia — feel this morning? How safe do the Polish people feel, sharing a 248-mile border with Russia’s lackey state, Belarus? Sweden’s Gotland Island is vital for NATO’s northern flank — how certain can anyone be that Russian forces won’t someday attack that critical target?
Is Vladimir Putin’s invading a NATO state, and triggering Article Five, really so unthinkable? Not too long ago, an all-out Russian invasion of Ukraine was similarly declared unthinkable — and yet, here we are. As David observed, Germany took a really long time to start making the right moves, and who knows how long their political will to oppose Russia will continue. Putin is offering paranoid and angry rants, metaphorically gave the middle finger to the United Nations, and smells weakness in Europe.
The Covid-19 pandemic showed us the immense power of “normalcy bias” — the sense that because yesterday was uneventful, and today has been uneventful so far, tomorrow will be uneventful, too. Human beings generally don’t like thinking about the worst-case scenarios and how things could go terribly wrong, so they don’t — until they absolutely have to, and by then, it is often too late.
Michael is right that the Europeans and many American elites may not sense a real-enough threat to warrant large, generational alterations to their society or way of life. But just because they don’t sense it, doesn’t mean that a real threat isn’t there.